One hell of a second chance
Phil Banks, who abruptly left the NYPD as the feds closed in on him and his friends in 2014, is overseeing the Department and atop the cops now as Eric Adams' new deputy mayor for public safety. Here's my Daily News column on how NYC got here, and why
It’s highly unusual for a top pick of a new mayor to announce his own appointment to a new role overseeing the NYPD in a Daily News column about how sorry he is now about palling around back in 2014 with “two men (who) were attempting to corrupt public officials” before his abrupt resignation as the department’s top uniformed official.
But here we are, with former Chief of Department Philip Banks III introducing himself as our new deputy mayor for public safety not at a press conference with Mayor Adams but in an op-ed offering a narrow and lawyerly accounting of how “my interaction with Rechnitz and Reichberg was a mistake” even as he repeated that he broke no rules and no laws.
But that “interaction” — with two men who bribed Mayor de Blasio and NYPD bosses who gave them illegal gun permits and police escorts — wasn’t a singular event. It included the bribers and Banks’ friend, former jails union boss Norman Seabrook, smoking cigars while hanging out with the chief at his office in 1 Police Plaza, where they also stored a million dollars’ worth of diamonds in his safe. Then there were the flights to Israel and the Dominican Republic, where Reichnitz testified that he paid for prostitutes for all four men.
Rechnitz, Reichberg and Seabrook are all convicted felons now, with Seabrook beginning a 58-month sentence for losing $19 million of his members’ money in a hedge fund he found through the two bribers he met through Banks. The bribers paid Seabrook off with $60,000 in cash inside of a designer man-purse they handed to him after the foursome ate at a steakhouse.
Hours before Banks announced his own appointment, The News reported that he’d told long-serving Internal Affairs Chief Joseph Reznick that he was going to be replaced. That may be ordinary housecleaning by a new administration, but the IAB under Reznick had worked with the FBI in investigating Banks, along with other NYPD bosses including several who resigned, one who committed suicide, and one who was acquitted at a trial where Banks was named as an unindicted co-conspirator and his attorney said he would plead the Fifth if called on to testify.
Banks, who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment income from Rechnitz’s company while he was a chief, insists his reasons for leaving the NYPD in 2014 had nothing to do with any of this but rather with a promotion he saw as an attempt by white leadership to sideline him as the department’s top Black official.
’ve been writing about the trials and investigations Banks was tied to for years because of how they exposed de Blasio’s Usual Suspects. In appointing Banks, Adams may be casting himself in the sequel.
There are reasons why he’s taking that risk, starting with his years of friendship with the Banks family and his determination to show that he’ll stand up to outside pressure.
But the main reason may be what one person who served in a leadership role at the NYPD described to me as Banks’ brilliance while running CompStat and pushing commanders to build what he called a “trust dividend” with citizens.
“Banks understood what cops had to do on the streets better than most commanders,” the person said. “As a man of his community, he saw we need to take the boots off the backs of our communities so they start coming to us. He saw CompStat as a place to give the message over and over again that there’s a reason to be smart about your power and not just knock heads. He was a pretty lonely voice up there on the dais.”
Adams, whose mayoralty is premised on his promise that he’s uniquely positioned to both reform the police and reduce crime, said after removing an effective watchdog loathed by the jails union he’s close with that no one cares about personalities, only results. He’s right about that, though the two aren’t so easily separated.
Adams has also said his administration will be scrupulous about following the rules — although following the rules and doing the right thing can be separated, as de Blasio vividly illustrated.
“I respect the man,” said the NYPD official who saw Banks in action. “I regard him as a tragic figure — there was this greatness and yet he stumbled in ways he should have known better than and it cost him and the city.
“There’s this other side of policing in New York with the people circling around some of those precincts, power brokers flinging stuff around — perks, ranks, names, chiefs. It’s as old as the NYPD and no one comes away smelling good, it’s just not possible. Their goal is to dirty you up.”
Thanks to Adams, Banks has a rare second shot to clean his reputation and use his talents for the public good. Both men better hope he makes the most of it.